


Une Génération Perdue

by pallidiflora



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner
Genre: Drunk Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:12:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallidiflora/pseuds/pallidiflora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was like the Japanese haiku: a limited form, rigid in its perimeters, within which an astonishing freedom was possible." The war, and childhood, and a birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Une Génération Perdue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disenchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/gifts).



> For Sarah and Moot. Dirty Talk 4ever ;* Summary quote is from Margaret Atwood.
> 
> Historical/language notes are at the end, though I recommend reading them first. (they're a little long to put here, is all!)

**1.**  
Narumi is a modern man.  
  
Perhaps it's a by-product of growing up with a man cultivated by 1873 sensibilities; "revere the emperor, expel the barbarians" is what was fed to him at his father's knee, a man to whom it seemed almost indelicate and un-Japanese to do something so Western as send his son telegraphs. He did, though, once, in loud katakana, all the way to California: "you're a Kempei for god's sake you're breaking your mother's heart don't even think about showing your face in Japan again".  
  
Something along those lines. It doesn't matter now, because on his way home Narumi had tossed it, piece by piece, into the Pacific Ocean.  
  
Perhaps it was something sparked sooner. To be modern means to be American, if only in a superficial sense—the pursuit of the American dream, the acquisition of American things; Narumi's bedroom is thus filled with imported tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl snuffboxes, Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton records, and a solitary art deco mirror with sunbursts like the chrysanthemum seals his father hung on the walls. Still, while all of this Americana is all well and good, Narumi has a feeling it was Russian philosophy—the Red and White Armies, Bolshevism and the persistence of permafrost—that shaped him.  
  
——  
  
When Narumi was Raidou's age, he slept on the bottom of a quadruple-decker bunk bed in the basement of a hotel in Khabarovsk, Siberia. It was nothing like the propaganda lithographs—lush, red-skied, with pink-cheeked Americans waving the rising sun from the far shores of the Sea of Japan. They had taken these with them from home and tacked them to the basement walls; not exactly homesickness, but the sight of civilized katakana spelling out foreign words like _Transsibirskaya_ and _Ussuri_ was a comfort, and something not to be forgotten in lieu of spidery Cyrillic. Instead, Siberia was bleak, shocking, leached as a skull in the sun; nowadays, more than anything, it is the unrelieved whiteness of the fields that causes him sweats in the middle of the night. It was a sea of bones.  
  
Foremost in Narumi's memory is the vodka—Stolichnaya, Moskovskaya, ones in bottles shaped like the Petrograd church spires or Matryoshka dolls. Any eighteen-year-old boy knew just how to pilfer liquor from the hotel restaurant, since most had not even a semishnik to spend on luxuries like postage or opium or kerosene, let alone a glass of restaurant vodka. Traditional Japanese wisdom, loath as they were to do so, was shunted aside in favor of Siberian survival tips, not that the peasants had much in the way of those: drink vodka, get a whore. These things will keep you warm, even if only in a superficial sense; you're lucky if you die hot with drink burning your belly and a fey Russian girl on your cock, blonde, blue-eyed, starved: Narumi thought of them as Famine, in the form of a pale devotchka, with her weighing scales.  
  
Most of his bunkmates had never set foot in the orthodox churches, though, and he didn't blame them a bit.  
  
Either way, what Narumi remembers best is pretending he was staving off frostbite with these two things (the former more so, cheaper as it was); he doesn't remember Mochizuki from the bunk above him dying of pneumonia ("maybe you'll catch it too, hmm?" his bunkmates joked, having heard them at night, and he hated himself for being relieved when he didn't), he doesn't remember pitching his mother's letters into the Amur River ("Shouhei, take a picture of the view from the train for me, won't you?"), he doesn't remember shooting a hungry bloodhound to put it out of its misery.  
  
This is probably why he feels so bitter about finding vodka for Raidou's eighteenth birthday—the Siberia he (doesn't) remember had the worst tea he's ever tasted, brackish _tyurya_ for every meal, and was entirely devoid of his favourite brown sugar cakes, but its vodka was clear as ice, great and terrible; the vodka that he finds in Japan, few and far between, is watery and weak, and doesn't burn his throat the way it should.  
  
When he drinks it, he can taste blood and fur on the snow, ashes and phenol and pickle brine; he picks Raidou up a bottle of extra-strong Suntory Shirofuda whiskey instead.  
  
 **2.**  
Raidou remembers spending much of his childhood on streetcars. When he was fourteen, his father would read him excerpts from Revelations on the way to churches in Kanda, his tubes glowing green, Virtue and Power and Principality; he would read him the stories of Rama and Sita as Jatayu and Hanuman looked over his shoulder; he would read to him from the Abhidhamma Pitaka while the train rattled its way to Senso-Ji for Sanja Matsuri.  
  
A religious education, Raidou's father maintained, was not to appease any god, but to stay well-informed; "devil summoners need to know these things," he would say, "because we know they are all true." Thus, Raidou spent the Sundays of 1929 kneeling in Nicholai-do with a black-bread host sitting on his tongue. On Saturdays he would sit cross-legged on the tatami mats in his parents' dining room, reciting mantras with the prayer beads his mother made for him in her spare time (she liked to make excursions to Kyoto now and again to collect lotus seeds or pearls, and whiled away the evenings in Kuzunoha Village threading them onto yarn). In the alcove where most Japanese would have scrolls or wildflowers, his father placed a statuette of Rudra to which Raidou offered milk and fruit every morning.  
  
His mother would mutter about _wastefulness_ this and _sacreligiousness_ that, but his father would just take a bottle of sake and his clay pipe out onto the porch and beckon Raidou to join him.  
  
Spending his formative years in Kuzunoha Village also meant drinking on the porch with his father. He remembers the twilit hours of 1930 the best, the start of a new decade—the clink and thud of sake glasses on the steps, the hum of his mother's radio from inside the house, and pipe smoke coiling toward the ceiling. On his fifteenth birthday, Raidou's father let him have a puff of his tobacco and passion flower and hops; he unrolled a length of leather across the wooden floor, and five empty glass tubes clinked together on top.  
  
"They're yours now, Jouhei," he said, and pressed them into his hand.  
  
 **3.**  
 _Namu amida butsu. Namu amida butsu. Namu amida butsu._  
  
It was all Narumi heard in 1927, like thousands and thousands of copies of his father all praying in the streets of Mineyama, prostrating themselves, covered in ash and sores and blood; they looked like minor Slavic gods, black and sepulchral, wailing and beating their breasts.  
  
Narumi stayed in, most days. He told himself it was because there wasn't much he could do—the streets were already clogged with people carting off rubble and dead bodies, putting out fires. In truth, he couldn't bear to walk past the churches, collapsed in on themselves like bashed skulls, layers of stone and wood spiraling inside themselves like endless Matryoshka dolls.  
  
It made him dizzy.  
  
For the first time in nearly nine years, his mother sent him a letter. _I hope you're well, Shouhei. Earthquake in Kyoto_ this and _your father and I are worried about you_ that. _You know your father didn't really mean it_ and _we love you very much_ and _wouldn't you consider going back to the army?_ Narumi could only imagine the face his mother made when she was lying; he could only imagine his father worrying about Koreans poisoning his well-water, huddling by his transistor radio like a freezing soldier or a starving animal—something waiting to be put out of its misery.  
  
He lit a match, and he wondered when his father was going to have the decency to die; the American dream, in other words. How very un-Japanese. How indelicate.  
  
In Khabarovsk, a Czechoslovak Legion boy about his age had tried to teach him some Czech shibboleth: it meant stick your finger through your throat, or something like that; "if a Czech can't say it, they're pretty fucking drunk," the boy had told him. He wrote it down on a piece of paper for him: _strč prst skrz krk_ , spelled out in innocuous katakana; at eighteen years old, drunk as a lord, it had seemed easy.  
  
He wanted to repeat this to himself as he drank sake and chain-smoked, watching his mother's letter curl and blacken over the stove, but he couldn't remember how to say it. At twenty-seven, it seemed much too morbid anyway.  
  
He had been wanting to move to the Capital then—larger, more anonymous. So he did.  
  
 **4.**  
"A bottle of whiskey is really not an appropriate eighteenth birthday present."  
  
"And yet, that doesn't seem to be stopping you from drinking most of it." Narumi strains his Manhattan into his glass.  
  
Tae is making her second Old Fashioned, dissolving the sugar cube at the bottom with water and bitters and a spoon. With composure, she says, "well, that is because I am twenty-three years old and I am entitled to the occasional social drink."  
  
"Raidou, she's drinking all of your whiskey. That I bought for you! Are you gonna just sit and watch?"  
  
Raidou just shrugs. He's had just two whiskey sours, and he's already half-cut. Narumi's battered old copy of How to Mix Drinks (in kanji, of course, and bound Japanese-style) lays open on the table in front of him, Tae running her pointer finger down the table of contents; he can barely read a word of it.  
  
Narumi remembers being his age, staring at bar menus in Russian, trying to remember what ж and л meant, complaining about how all he wanted was a goddamn gin fizz and had no head for languages.  
  
How times have changed.  
  
"It's getting late," Narumi says, watching as Raidou's eyelids droop and he blinks, heavy and slow. The way his cheeks are flushed, his pupils dilated—it makes Narumi's stomach clench. He gets up and his chair scrapes across the floor. "C'mon, Raidou."  
  
"Aw, Narumi!" Tae says, draining her glass. "You must be getting old!"  
  
He's been old since he was eighteen; Raidou since even before that.  
  
"I guess so," he says instead.  
  
He slides an arm around Raidou's shoulder, and takes him upstairs.  
  
 **5.**  
Raidou remembers very clearly his lessons growing up. The eightfold path: prajna, sila, samadhi; the bodhipakkhiya dhamma; Catholic hymns—Gloria in Excelsis Dio, Jesu Dulcis Memoria, Laudate Dominum. The Judas kiss. Thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots.  
  
 _Namu amida butsu. Namu amida butsu.  
_  
And when he was fourteen, the sermons on luxuria: the five precepts (I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct); Genesis 8:21 (the imagination of the heart of man is evil from his youth). He was warned, in a clinical way, of lustful demons: the lamia, the succubus—especially Lilith, with the snake coiled around her; slick, all curves, plump flesh. She was everything primordial, every hunger, his ancestors told him, but she could be overcome.  
  
Raidou listened, diligent as he always was, but still, in the summer months he would watch the village men work, naked backs glistening, and he would sweat in his heavy clothes, buttoned to the neck.  
  
He would wake in the night sometimes, his bedclothes damp; succubi visited men in their sleep and caused this, or so he was told, but no beautiful demons lurked in his dark bedroom. Instead, he dwelled on his dream: the older boy from down the road cupping himself through his trousers as Raidou passed him, obscene. Thinking of incubi, which his ancestors hadn't spoken of overmuch, he fell asleep.  
  
The next morning Raidou sweated under his starched collar during training, and thirteen pairs of ghostly eyes watched him.  
  
"Lust clouds the mind and gels the blood, 14th." Raidou the 4th (or was it 5th?) had hovered over him, paternal, shapeless, incandescent. He said, "you must discipline yourself. Success is dependent upon restraint."  
  
Raidou had licked the blood from the corner of his mouth, and looked away.  
  
 **6.**  
Raidou leans heavily on Narumi as they stumble down the hallway; it is dark, because Narumi says he doesn't want to owe extra on the electricity bill, and they trip over their own feet. _Success is dependent on restraint_ , Raidou thinks. _I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness._  
  
This disobedience is exhilarating, he thinks, Narumi's hand on his waist, his head spinning.  
  
Narumi slides open the door to Raidou's room—Japanese-style, old-fashioned. He fumbles for the light switch, but his hands find only wood and paper; it must be one of those pull-chain types, the kind he had replaced wherever he could. He doesn't go into Raidou's room often, because he has no need to, but it smells familiar: agarwood, starch, paraffin wax, and, faintly, pomade—the one vanity Raidou allows himself.  
  
"Raidou," he says. His arms are around Raidou's shoulders now, their faces nearly touching. He is thinking _Raidou's almost half my age, he's drunk, he's just a kid_ —the last is not true, but he thinks it anyway. Aloud, he says, "where's your light switch?"  
  
"Narumi..." Raidou says, gripping hard at the lapels of his jacket. His hands linger there.  
  
Their foreheads touch. Raidou's breath smells like liquor and lemon juice, he's breathing through his nose; his closed mouth is on Narumi's, hard and insistent.  
  
"We can't," Narumi breathes against his cheek when they break apart, against every impulse he has, has ever had. Narumi is 33 years old: old enough to know better, in other words. He has _known better_ for a damn long time.  
  
He has wanted him for too long, though; it is almost a physical ache.

"I want you to fuck me," Raidou whispers; his speech is formal, dignified, even. The word _fuck_ does not suit him; "I want to know you," is what he should be saying, "in the Biblical sense."  
  
Narumi tries not to think of frost-crowned churches as he presses Raidou into his low futon with its glass-smooth comforter, white and pristine and unwrinkled. He thinks instead of the condoms he has sitting unused in his bedside table, Heart Beauty brand; he should use them, he thinks, because he knows better than not to, but Raidou's hands are fumbling with his shirt buttons, his hard-on pressing into his thigh. If he gets up now, he will climb into his own bed and will sleep until 2, and he will nurse a hangover the rest of the day; Raidou will bring him toast and coffee and medication on a tray, and they will pretend that nothing untoward happened. Raidou will be stiff, Narumi jovial.  
  
He knows better, but he doesn't stop.  
  
Instead, he palms Raidou's cock through his slacks before unbuttoning them, his own trousers long since discarded.  
  
"Wait," Raidou says, and slowly takes his slacks off himself. He folds them carefully at the edge of the futon, trying to preserve their pleats; they will probably be wrinkled in the morning, but he smoothes his hands across them once, twice.  
  
Narumi strokes himself lazily as he watches; in this moment, Raidou's fastidiousness is endearing. It is arousing, almost. He will fuck the uptightness out of him.  
  
Raidou gropes in the dark and finds a jar of salve; Narumi can hardly see him, but he can tell Raidou's face is hot as he slicks up two fingers and works them inside him. Raidou buries his face in his shoulder, and makes eager noises low in his throat.  
  
Narumi says "are you sure?" and Raidou digs his heels into his lower back.  
  
Narumi fucks him.  
  
Raidou groans and grabs at the blanket beneath him and it hurts, but Narumi is inside him, moving, breathing in his ear, and damned if he hasn't wanted this. He has wanted this since he was old enough to be scolded by spectres; since he was old enough to worship.  
  
"Raidou," Narumi's saying, over and over, "Raidou, god, _Raidou_..."  
  
Like a litany, like a prayer, like a mantra, like making a religious affair out of fucking him. It _is_ , almost.  
  
Raidou almost expects to see the sickly green of ancestral spirits through his eyelids, to hear admonitions echoing in his skull—he doesn't care anymore; he just wants to hear his bedcovers rustle under his back, he just wants Narumi's fingers digging into his hips. He just wants to come.  
  
" _Jouhei_ ," Narumi says into his ear, and Raidou comes, digging his blunt nails into Narumi's shoulder.  
  
 **7.**  
Narumi still wakes at 2, but on Raidou's futon, tangled in his once-perfect comforter. Probably Raidou will take time out of today, one of his few days off, to iron it; Narumi gets out of bed with the intention of telling him not to bother, just this once.  
  
He comes downstairs to the smells of freshly-brewed coffee and toast—Raidou is pouring the coffee into a mug and placing toast (buttered precisely from end-to-end, the way he likes it) onto a plate.  
  
His ears, usually shadowed by his hat, redden at the tips, but all he says is "Obon is tomorrow—I hung our yukata in your closet. We'll have to pick up flowers and fruit to take to the temple tomorrow. Figs, I think, and plums, if we can afford both."  
  
He pauses, running a hand over a pair of his slacks he's laid out on the table in lieu of an ironing board, the iron still steaming next to them; the earnestness of an eighteen year old boy ironing his own pants at midday is almost painfully endearing, Narumi thinks.  
  
Raidou continues, "my father used to like to get peaches for offerings. They were his favourite."  
  
The way Raidou says this—utterly serious, with perfect decorousness—makes Narumi's chest swell. He wants to kiss his face; he wants to fuck him again, slow this time, with sunlight coming in bars through his Western-style blinds. He takes a sip of his coffee, which is terrible in a way that charms him.  
  
"We'll get peaches too," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Historical/language notes:
> 
> Kempeitai - Japanese secret police; since Narumi was a spy, it's possible he was part of them at one point. The short form is "kempei".
> 
> Transsibirskaya - Russian word for Trans-Siberian, as in the Trans-Siberian Railway.
> 
> Ussuri - the name of a river near Khabarovsk.
> 
> Semishnik - an archaic term for 2 kopeks; 100 kopeks make up one Russian ruble.
> 
> Devotchka - Russian term for girl.
> 
> Tyurya - a cold Russian soup.
> 
> Rama & Sita - incarnations of Vishnu and Lakshmi in the Ramayana.
> 
> Jatayu & Hanuman - Other peripheral characters of the Ramayana; also MegaTen demons.
> 
> Sanja Matsuri - Three Shrine Festival, one of the largest festivals in Tokyo held every May.
> 
> 1927 - the year of the Kita Tango Earthquake in Kyoto.
> 
> Holy Resurrection Cathedral/Nicholai-Do - Japan's main Russian Orthodox church.
> 
> Obon - a mid-summer festival honouring dead ancestors.


End file.
